Friday night dinner

After a long and busy week we did not want to go out so I decided to stop by Smillies for chicken tenders and take some frozen shrimp from Sam's to cook on the grill.  The corn looked fresh and I also got some brocollini to try.  I put olive oil and fresh garden herbs(oregano, parsley and basil) along with salt and pepper on the shrimp and Lake Shore Drive Seasoning from The Spice House in Evanston, Ill on the chicken.  Gary helped me make some fresh salsa and guac for the side.   I also boiled purple and brown new potatoes from Homegrown Foods.  Yummy and easy meal on a beautiful Friday night.

Summer catch up

Just some photo's of Big Green Egg cooking over the last month.  I've learned how to regulate and evenly distribute the heat.  I've cooked the chicken, salmon, turkey burgers and turkey sausages without anything but the BGE lump charcoal.  The flavor is so good.  We've been using the chicken for wraps and salad, as you can see above.  It's been fun to cook a bunch of food on Sunday to simplify the week:)

Return from a Weekend trip- Chicken Breasts- June 5, 2011

We returned on Sunday from a trip to a Pulhoz win, stopping at Whole Foods.  I had to show the photo of their veggie displays.  We even ate breakfast there before doing a little shopping.  So, we have a big outdoor grill at work and Kirk had grilled chicken breasts with Santa Maria seasoning on them on Friday.  I went to Harter House and purchased 4.  Started up the grill, put on the breasts at 350.  I turned them a couple of times for a total of almost 25 minutes.  they were delicious and made great wraps for lunch with avocados and locally made Float Trip pickles.

Friday night Salmon- June 3rd, 2011

Friday night in June sounded like a good time to attempt to get some Copper River salmon so I went to Dillons after work and got a pound and a half.  Rather than marinate in the bag I just put the fish on our fish platter and put olive oil, light soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic salt and California pepper.  I started the fire, prepared the asparagus with olive oil and sea salt then waited until the egg reached 400 degrees.  I placed the fish directly on the grill and held the temperature at 350.  The salmon cooked for around 20 minutes and easily came off the grill onto the fish platter.  I put the asparagus on the Green Egg grill pan which I had sprayed with Pam and cooked them for 7 minutes.  For a side i had orzo salad from The Traveling Chef, Jennifer Smith.  We had a nice salad and a great 1997 bottle of Silver Oak. It was a pleasure to have our first meal of the season being outside on the patio.  Simple meal and great tastes.

Saturday night Pizza

Last night we did not go to the lake and Gary had gone on a 25 mile bike ride, so we decided to try pizza again on the BGE. I lit the grill and got it to 500 degrees. We used a Pillsbury Pizza Crust which Gary rolled out and placed on the wooden paddle. I configured the grill as before with the grate, plate topper top up and our pizza stone. We added Kraft Mozzarella cheese to the top of the crust then added asparagus from the farmer's market, sliced red onions, Cherry Cherub tomatoes cut in half, roasted red pepper and mushrooms. We topped it with Kraft Parmesan cheese, basil and oregano from our garden, Penzey's Garlic Salt and California Pepper, and Penzey's Pizza Herbs. I cooked the pizza for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. We took the pizza and stone off and sliced the pizza from there. It was delicious and the crust was perfect!

James' Pork Tenderloin

Last week we ran into Sally and James while walking and collaborated on dinner. James was cooking plain pork tenderloin which he had rubbed with Jack's Gourmet Seasoning from Outdoor Home and he used hickory wood chips for flavoring. He cooked the tenderloin to a temp of 145 at 325 degrees on the BGE, about 20 minutes. It was a bit underdone so Sal put it in the oven for 10 minutes. While the pork was in the oven he cooked our asparagus and mushrooms brushed with with basel olive oil. The flavor of the meat was really smoky and good! Nice mid-week dinner.

Mother's Day Pizza May 8th

Pizza has been one of the things I had really been wanting to try on the GBE. Gary and I make our own pizza's in the our oven alot so we wanted to see if there was really a difference. I ran the menu by Mom and it sounded good to her. I googled and read several blogs and posts about how to do it. I decided to heat the grill to 500 degrees then put the grate on with the BGE plate setter, plate side up on top of it. The reason for that is that you need the pizza at the level of the grill opening in order to get it off without dropping or messing it up. We always use the Pillsbury pizza crust mix which you add a 1/2 c of water to and let it rise a bit. Gary has made homemade crusts but they really are not any better than the Pillsbury crust. We were having my folks and Randy so we decided to make 2 pizza's and have a nice big salad. I quickly put the pizza stone on the hot plate setter to get it heated up. We made our crusts, Gary rolled out the dough on the Corian countertop with some of flour underneath then put the crust on our Williams Sonoma wooden pizza paddle with Quaker's corn meal on it. We always use Kraft Mozzerella shredded cheese for the base then we added bits of hamburger meat, chopped red onion, chopped tomatoes, and fresh chopped mushrooms. We put Kraft parmesan shredded cheese on the top along with Penzey's Garlic and California Pepper. We added some oregano and were ready to put it on the grill. The temp was around 500 degrees when we opened the lid and Gary quickly slid the pizza on. The temp went down but I got it backup to 400. I am getting better with regulating the temp, thank goodness. It has taken a year. The pizza's got rave reviews with a wonderful flavor! We can't wait to grill another pizza!